What if there were only 38 states in the USA? In 1973, California State University geography professor George Etzel Pearcy proposed that the state lines be redrawn to better distribute population, urban areas, and tax base. Obviously, his plan did not come to fruition. Mental_floss takes a look at the 38 state map, the badly distorted Mercator Map, and the map that claims the Chinese discovered America in the article 3 Controversial Maps. Link

I'm surprised they didn't include any of those joke maps that went around the Internet after the 2000 (or was it 2004?) election, which showed many of the blue states defecting to join Canada. Now that would be controversial!